FRENCH FOLLOWER OF ANDREA SOLARIO, CIRCA 1600 | Ecce Homo

The painting is executed on a single oak panel which is stable, beveled on all four sides, and has a very slight vertical bow. This painting is clean and restored and can be hung in its current condition. UV light reveals some carefully applied retouches in the chest and cheek of Christ, as well as in the background. His red cloak and the majority of the skin is very nicely preserved. In a carved wooden frame.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This depiction of Ecce Homo is based on a lost work by Solario that, together with an image of the Mater Dolorosa (now in a private collection, Zurich), formed a diptych. David Alan Brown has dated the Mater Dolorosa painting to Solario’s period in France, circa 1507-1509.¹  The composition of the lost Ecce Homo is known from a copy of the diptych made by the artist Simon de Chalons which is signed and dated 1543 (Galleria Borghese, Rome).²  The present copy was most likely painted by a French follower of Solario; it is painted on oak panel, an unusual support for an Italian work, but not uncommon in France at that time.  Solario painted another similar composition of the Ecce Homo, also thought to have been produced in France during the same period, but with differences.  Two autograph versions of that composition are known, one in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the other in the Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig.  

1.  See D.A. Brown, Andrea Solario, pp. 211-212, cat. no. 48, reproduced fig 143.
2.  Ibid., p. 183, reproduced figs. 144 and 145.